The Short Forever by Stuart Woods

Author:Stuart Woods [Woods, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2002-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

32

STONE GOT OUT OF THE CAB AT THE bottom of Farm Street; he might as well have walked, he reflected, it had taken him so long to get a cab. The rain was still falling steadily, and the sky was unnaturally dark for the time of day. Lights were coming on in the houses of Farm Street.

He moved slowly up the little street, looking for men on foot or in cars. He did not want to encounter the two large men in the black car again, if he could help it. The street was empty of people, and all the parked cars were empty. With a final look around, Stone ran up the steps of the house and let himself in.

Grateful to be inside again, he stuck his umbrella into a stand to drain and hung his wet raincoat on a peg inside the door. The house was quite dark, with only minimal light coming through the windows from outside. Stone drew the curtains on the street-side windows and switched on the hall light to get his bearings, then switched it off again.

He had a brief look at the drawing room, switching the lights on and off again, then turned to the study, where he figured anything of interest to him would most likely be. He switched on a lamp on the desk, and the beautiful old paneling glowed in the light. There were many books, most of them bound in leather, and the desk seemed quite old, probably Georgian. Stone tried the drawers and found them unlocked. He sat down at the desk and began to go methodically through the drawers.

The contents were what might be expected in any prosperous home — bills, credit card statements in Erica’s name, but none in Lance’s. In a bottom drawer he found several months of bank statements, this time in Lance’s name. They were from The Scottish Highlands Bank, of which Stone had never heard, and he learned from examining them that Lance wrote very few checks. There were no canceled checks in the statement, but the printout identified each payee, and they were mostly for rent and household expenses. Those that weren’t were in larger amounts — five to ten thousand pounds — and were made payable to cash. Lance seemed to walk around with a lot of money in his pockets. All the deposits into the account were from wire transfers from two banks — one in the Cayman Islands and one in Switzerland. Lance would transfer twenty-five thousand pounds at a time into the account. These were substantial amounts, but not those of a multimillionaire; Lance, apart from his high-end address, seemed to live rather simply. There was no evidence of car ownership, clubs, or expensive purchases.

Erica’s credit card statements revealed mostly purchases of clothing and small household items. Her deposits came from a New York bank and were more on the order of ten thousand dollars at a time, and less frequent than Lance’s. Stone returned everything carefully to the drawers, leaving them as he had found them.

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